FOX Breaks 'Free'

"Free Ride" is an old song and a new show, which is kind of the point of this fresh new FOX comedy. You get back home after college, you're not sure if you're moving forward or hitting reverse. Cue the Edgar Winter song from the '70s and hit the air guitar, quick, before your dad does.

Likable newcomer Josh Dean plays Nate, the guy stuck in the middle upon driving home to small-city Missouri from his California college years. "The good news is that I know what I don't want to do," the business major brightly tells a dad disappointed he has "no solid game plan." But then, neither does dad (Allan Havey). He and mom (Loretta Fox) are in therapy, trying to find themselves, too, oozing too much information about their marital meanderings for their prodigal son's comfort, and not enough concern about him for Nate to dismiss while he eats it up anyway.

Our befuddled returnee almost immediately rediscovers a girl from high school (Erin Cahill) who becomes a quick-smitten crush and who just might feel the same way about him, except that she's engaged. Not engaged in any way, romantic or mental, is the dude Nate runs into working at the local dead-end-job superstore, who immediately appoints himself Nate's "personal party sherpa" without being asked to. So Nate is essentially set loose by his self-absorbed parents, adopted by a druggy dork in a monster truck, and accelerating into adulthood without the least clue where he's heading.

He's improvising his life, and "Free Ride" is partially improvised, too, but tightly edited, to avoid that what's-the-point wandering that makes some of us turn tail whenever "improv" is threatened. Creator Rob Roy Thomas (Bravo's "Significant Others") has a handle on how he wants things to feel. Nate is forever confronted with something unexpected, oddly angled and uncomfortably uncanny, as if caught in the currents of a swift-moving river pulling him along for, well, the ride. He decides to just drift, and we're swept along, a dozen things happening in every episode, and from every direction.

Tonight's pilot-preview episode isn't the only one busy and bouncing. When the show settles into its regular Sunday 9:30 p.m. time slot March 12, Nate gets an excruciating McJob, gawks at his parents' relationship games, and double dates with his drunken divorcing aunt and reliable party pal Mark Dove (Dave Sheridan). He moseys all around town, from awkward work get-togethers to older-generation hotel bars. "Free Ride" never feels rushed, though, its locations providing comic flavor rather than frantic relocations. There's an essential absurdity to almost everything as Nate sits back and watches life going on around him, unsure what he actually wants to make an effort to take part in. He's playing a reactive character, yet Dean radiates a warmth that draws affection toward him, making him a strangely motivating force.

The best thing about "Free Ride" is the lack of pressure to be about something. Trusting its talented cast to embody their own truths, it ambles and weaves, leaving space for the characters, even folks briefly bumped into, to nail a specific attitude or situation. They aren't trying to sum up everything at once. They're just letting us peek at lives already in progress. That's where improv actually clicks. Without a script's must-include entry lines and conclusions, Thomas can cherry-pick the best interactions to piece together something worth watching. And something telling, after all. You never know what you'll find when you go with the flow.